How Do We Build Good Leaders in High School Athletics?
A high school basketball coach surprised me when he told me recently that he couldn’t get any of his boys on the team to be the “captain.” Typically, he said, the team votes on each season’s new captains, but when the votes were counted, the two students who got the most votes turned down the…
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Two Skills Every Student Needs Before Graduation
There’s an ongoing tension that educational leaders constantly feel on their jobs. Almost every educator I interact with these days faces a tension between two realities: The need to teach to the test, so students score high enough to get funding. The desire to prepare students to be life and career ready upon graduation. This…
Continue ReadingWhat You Can Do to Enable Kids to Grow Up
After a lively debate with a student group about the essence of healthy leadership, one student approached me with an indifferent attitude toward preparing to be a leader. When the subject came up of how slowly kids are maturing today, this male student said to me: “What’s the big hurry? I’ll probably live until I’m…
Continue ReadingPositive Discipline: Three Practical Strategies Parents Can Use
I’m hearing more and more stories lately of teenagers filing lawsuits against parents. It’s quite disconcerting to me. In the wake of decades of expanding children’s rights, kids are now using terms with adults like: You can’t do that to me. I have rights to my privacy. This is my life to live how I…
Continue ReadingMy Favorite Leadership Quotes
Every year I post a list. It’s a list I think leaders like you will appreciate and benefit from. I’ve posted lists of my favorite leadership books, my favorite leadership movies and even my favorite leadership examples—and many of them are students! Today, I’d like to share with you some of my favorite leadership quotes.…
Continue ReadingWhen Positive Words Negatively Affect Students
I’ve watched the influence of the words of leaders, teachers and parents for years now. Far too often, when we speak we’re only thinking about how we feel at the moment or what we’re thinking in that moment—not how those words will affect our kids. It isn’t until later that we recognize what those words…
Continue ReadingHow to Manage Impulsive Reactions
When I asked student athletes recently what the number one change was that they’d like to make in their life—their response surprised me. Very insightfully, most of them agreed: “I need to be less impulsive in my decisions.” We live in a day where everything seems to be moving faster and faster. Additionally, we tend…
Continue ReadingBuilding Resilient Students: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
Eight years ago, researchers began to discover that children today acquire more allergies than children in past generations. For instance, no one had any idea why “peanut allergies” are surging in our day and age, since so many parents and schools are protecting kids from such exposure to peanuts. While such allergies were low among…
Continue ReadingThree Top “F” Words Teens Use Today
If you work with students, you already know they have their own language. I suppose my generation did too, when I was a teenager, but language expansion must be on steroids today. Pause and think for a moment about the common phrases a high school or college student may use today: – Netflix and Chill…
Continue ReadingWhen Achievement Becomes an Unhealthy Pursuit
I’ve committed my life to building student leaders—young people who are almost always ambitious and high achieving. The last two generations have grown up as students who are predisposed to believe they can and will change the world. But I’ve seen some kids cross a line when it comes to achievement. I just spoke to…
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